Columbus Instruments' Hot Plate Analgesia Meter is designed for rapid and efficient screening of analgesia levels in small laboratory animals. When placed on the hot surface of the plate, animals will lift their paws and lick them (paw-lick response) due to attainment of pain threshold. The hot plate can provide a constant 55oC surface; low enough to avoid harm to subjects, yet high enough to be uncomfortable. The hot plate unit has a built-in digital thermometer with an accuracy of 0.1oC and a timer with an accuracy of 0.1 second. A remote foot-switch completely controls the test sequence for rapid hands-free screening. A standard RS-232 serial port can be connected to any personal computer to save data directly in disk files. The RS-232 output comes complete with serial cable and software for Windows compatible computers.
The animal is placed on the hot plate, confined by a clear acrylic cage which surrounds the plate. The Start/Stop button, or foot-switch is pushed to activate the timer. Time is displayed in tenths of a second until the experimenter observes temperature discomfort (paw-lick response) and pushes the Start/Stop button or foot-switch to deactivate the timer. The timer reading can then be recorded manually from the front panel display or sent through the RS-232 serial port to an external computer for disk storage.